Esperanza\'s Box of Saints When

Esperanza's Box Of Saints

When the reader first meets the man Esperanza will fall in love with, he is described as both a holy figure and a ridiculous figure: "The wrestling angel walked out of the locker rooms wearing another outfit (205). The blurring between fantasy and reality grows even more intense as the narrative Esperanza's Box of Saints evolves and unfolds. On one hand, this angel is a figure in the conventional guise of the divine. This angel, like an angel of the bible has wings. Angels of the Bible also wrestle with evil. But this angel is in reality a man in a tight wrestling costume. The absurdity of faith as well as the absurdity of modern culture is highlighted in the image. "Won't you be needing this?" she says, as Esperanza hands the angel his boot, like he is Cinderella, a figure from a fairy tale (205).

The fact that his name is "Angel Justice" further complicates this fantastic picture. The man's name truly is Angel, as if fantasy, reality, and the strangeness of modern sport culture all come together in Esperanza's vision, validating her view of the world. Angels enforce God's justice on the world, and Esperanza, through the third-person limited omniscient narrator, calls him an angel in her mind, even after he mentions that he has a girlfriend. There is an evident attraction between the two of them, as Angel J. holds her hand a "fraction too long" but Esperanza also thinks in disappointment that "he was giving her a ride and stopping along the way," and this didn't mean he was truly thankful (205). She feels let down, in other words, as if he were a 'real' man. Desire, and whether the handsome angel is a holy angel or a man wearing angel wings that stimulates her sexual desire are all conflated, even in Esperanza's own thinking about this attractive yet removed figure.

Esperanza's Box of Saints pp.219-254

When he came back, he was right where he had left her, still holding the chicken breast to her face and wondering how she had ended up falling in love in the middle of her search for her daughter" (224) the scene is both comic and tragic. On one hand, Esperanza has just been badly wounded. Her beloved Angel, however, is an expert at healing, not because he is a holy angel, but because he is a wrestler who frequently gets injured himself and has blue ointment in his truck. He explains that red meat is better than white meat to treat a bruise, but chicken must suffice. His ointment, he says helpfully, is "the closest you can get this ointment is near a race track in Tijuana, just ask horse," and the ointment does heal Esperanza's wound, even though it is not offered to her in a romantic way -- just like the raw chicken (224).